But 1949 was a great year for American world government advocates.
On April 4, 1949, Dean Acheson's "brainchild," the North Atlantic Treaty, was ratified by the United States. President Truman signed the proclamation putting NATO in force on August 24, 1949. Most Americans were happy with this organization. It was supposedly a military alliance to protect the free world against communism. But few Americans bothered to read the brief, 14-article treaty. If they had, Article 2 would have sounded rather strange and out of place in a military alliance. Here is Article 2 of the NATO Treaty:
"The parties will contribute toward the future development of peaceful and friendly international relations by strengthening their free institutions, by bringing about a better understanding of the principles upon which these institutions are founded, and by promoting conditions of stability and well being. They will seek to eliminate conflict in their international economic policies and will encourage economic collaboration between any or all of them."
Here in this "military" treaty, which re-affirms the participants' "faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations," is the legal basis for a union, an Atlantic Union, a supra-national government, all under the United Nations.
Immediately upon the formation of NATO, Clarence K. Streit created (in 1949) the Atlantic Union Committee, Inc. Strait's old Federal Union was permitted to become virtually defunct (although it technically still exists, as publisher of Streit's books, and so on). Streit got federal tax exemption for the Atlantic Union Committee by writing into its charter a proviso that the organisation would not "attempt to influence legislation by propaganda or otherwise."
Yet, the charter of AUC states its purposes as follows:
"To promote support for congressional action requesting the President of the United States to invite the other democracies which sponsored the North Atlantic Treaty to name delegates, representing their principal political parties, to meet with delegates of the United States in a federal convention to explore how far their peoples, and the peoples of such other democracies as the convention may invite to send delegates, can apply among them, within the framework of the United Nations, the principles of free federal union."
An Atlantic Union Committee Resolution, providing for the calling of an international convention to "explore" steps toward a limited world government, was actually introduced in the Congress in 1949–with the support of a frightful number of "liberals" then in the Congress.